


Growing Up

by LizzyLovegood



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode: The Day of the Doctor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:29:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzyLovegood/pseuds/LizzyLovegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What else could Bad Wolf mean but Rose? Rose returning to him even when he thought all his chances had been used up. Why didn't Ten return to Queen Elizabeth after saving Gallifrey?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Up

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on FF on 12/13/13 under Lizzy Lovegood.

The TARDIS is barely stationed in the time vortex before the Doctor is off, barreling down corridors with a speed he usually reserves for a nick-of-time planet-saving. He can feel the memories slipping from his grasp; already, he finds it a bit difficult to recall what his past and future selves looked like (bit of a blessing, that, what self-respecting man wears a _fez_?).

But he can’t forget. Not yet.

He sprints past the swimming pool, the library, and the cinema room, works his way through a maze of storage rooms and broom closets. He can’t believe he let the TARDIS bury it this thoroughly, can’t believe he let himself – _made_ himself – forget.

The Doctor skids around a corner and has to grasp the wall of the TARDIS to regain balance. He can feel her concern under his palm.

“I’m alright,” he says, whether to reassure her or himself he isn’t sure. He turns on his heel in an attempt to get his bearings, and suddenly it is right in front of him.

It is just a plain door but he would know it anywhere. How many times had he pushed it open to wake her in the mornings, to check on her at night or, in later days, to strip off his many layers and curl up beside her, pressing as close as he possibly could?

How could he have forgotten that?

The Doctor places a hand to the door and takes a deep breath before pushing it open. The door bangs against the wall, echoing much too loudly in the silent, empty room. It is not draped in black – still, in fact, contains her bright pink bedspread and throw pillows – but the Doctor has never seen anything more depressing.

He doesn’t know what he expected. . . .

But the Doctor – that older, younger, grizzled Doctor – he had said _Bad Wolf_ , hadn’t he? No, more than that. _Oh, Bad Wolf Girl, I could kiss you!_ – that’s what it had been. And for a moment the world had frozen, and in that moment nothing else had mattered – not Gallifrey, not the other two Doctors (never mind that they were him), not the entire human race – because what else could Bad Wolf mean but Rose? Rose, coming back. Rose, returning to him even when he thought the last of his chances had been used up that time (not the first, but the _second_ – Rassilon, how stupid could he be not to take it then?) on Bad Wolf Bay.

“Sorry,” he had asked, “did you just say Bad Wolf?”

Neither of the Doctors nor the companion (Clara he thought her name was) had answered him. But the Doctor knew what he had heard, swore that he could feel her breath on his neck. He swung around manically, sure that she was about to pop out from behind him, laughing at his wide-eyed expression before taking his hand in hers – _of course I’m here, Doctor, where else would I be?_

His fingers clenched on empty air and he had looked down, surprised not to find her hand in his.

Those extremities, traitors that they are, do the same now as he sits on her bed – _their_ bed? They had never gotten around to reserving sides or defining what exactly it was they were doing, mostly because they weren't sure themselves – sometimes they would both sleep in their respective beds, sometimes both in his or hers (depending on whose was closer) where never much sleeping was done, sometimes collapsing in the library or cinema room. They had never gotten around to a lot of things, really.

He had known that she wanted, needed, more; he had too. But what was he supposed to do? Ask her to _go steady_ , slip her a note asking _Do you luv me_ with boxes to check off? She deserved so much bigger, so much better than that – but just how much so was an equation that was impossible to quantify.

Several outfits lie, abandoned, on the bedspread. Rose had brought Jackie – who didn’t believe that two people could live together a month let alone two years without going at it like rabbits – back here once they had restored the Earth to its’ proper place, showing off the vast wardrobe, the various alien artifacts and, most importantly, the Doctor-less bed. Of course, the Doctor had long-ago rid the room of his pajamas and boxer-briefs (the banana-patterned ones that made Rose giggle every time she saw them, somewhat emasculating when one was trying to be seductive), had unwound his silk ties from the bedposts – but that was beside the point.

He looks down at the overall skirt he holds in his hands. She had shown it off to her mother then, holding it in front of her body. _I was gonna wear this to the 1970s but we ended up in the_ 1870s _instead, isn’t that right, Doctor?_

The Doctor, hovering in the doorway, caught up in memories of that skirt and how he had been unable to take his eyes off her, how he had found any and every excuse to touch her, started at the unexpected question.

“What? Oh, yeah, that’s right.” He forced a smile, distancing himself even then, already set to let her go again, knowing she would hate him for it. Wanting her to hate him.

Because then at least she could be happy, content in the knowledge that she had chosen Mr. Right.

Because then his hatred of himself would be justified.

He buries his face in the denim fabric, lets her scent envelop him, breathing her in just as she would him, nose pressed into his suited shoulder, feet swinging several inches off the ground as he swept her into a post-reunion hug. Those hugs had become a tradition so, of course, after his miraculous regeneration – even with Donna and Jack looking on voyeuristically – they had had to have one then, too.

Part of him had never wanted to let her go, but the other – just slightly larger – part had been waiting, waiting, _waiting_ , for something to tear them apart again; another disaster to save them from the unbearable domesticity that was sure to come if he had to say it. That was what lovers – _lovers_ , the word simultaneously thrilled and terrified him – did, wasn’t it, after a long separation? Especially if one lover was dying in front of the other. He had seen _Romeo and Juliet_ (the play itself and the film with that pretty-boy Leonardo DiCaprio) enough times to know.

Yet all he had been able to muster up was _Long time, no see._ As if she were an old primary school chum rather than the woman his whole life revolved around.

He had seen in her eyes that she had expected more – that same look she would give him over tea and toast on those mornings after – had known that those three words were inevitability, had all but felt them on the tip of his tongue. But then had come the disaster (another inevitability) with Davros and the Daleks and the reality bomb and the terrible miracle that was the Metacrisis and it had turned out those three words – words he had anticipated and dreaded – weren’t a fixed point in time after all.

At least not for him.

They had dissolved on his tongue the moment he had understood the Metacrisis's purpose in his timeline, leaving a bitter taste in their wake, a taste only relieved with those just-as-bitter words: _Does it need saying_ and reappeared in full force as he watched his pink-and-yellow human press those soft, pink lips to his clone's. But oh, how he wished they were his; how he wanted to tear the Metacrisis off of her, gather her in his arms, and carry her over the threshold of the TARDIS, at long last, a groom bringing his blushing bride home; how he wanted to make sweet, tender love to her all night and whisper those words across her skin, marking her as his.

But how could he possibly deserve to feel love’s keen sting when he had never taken that chance in the first place? When he had never been able to say the words – not even in a whisper as she laid, asleep in his arms, their limbs tangled and lightly sheened in sweat – no matter how many chances he was given? Because how could he possibly say them when he was unsure of what those words would mean? More family events, he was certain – a cousin's wedding where Jackie would shoot him a pointed look when Rose caught the bouquet or a pet on-board the TARDIS (Rose loved cats and he couldn’t stand them). How could he say those words, seal that promise of forever, when even tomorrow might bring another inevitable disaster to separate them from that very thing? How was one _lover_ to go on without the other?

Worse, what if she left him, not through any alien cause but of her own free will, tired of yearning for something that he could never give her – two point five kids and a house with a white-picket fence? How, then, could he go on without her?

A myriad of reasons to account for one: he was a coward.

It was only once he had left Pete’s World behind – for good this time, he was too afraid to face her again: suppose she hated him, suppose she loved him? – returned an oblivious Donna to her family and taken stock of his surroundings that he found himself in a completely unfamiliar place.

Rose’s room, always to be found just down the hall from wherever he happened to be searching, that ever-present reminder of the name – the woman – who kept him fighting, was gone.

He hadn't gone looking.

He had wanted to forget.

If only it had been that easy. But, he supposed, if it had been he would never have fallen so deeply and so hard in the first place. Every room, every crevasse, every nook and cranny was imbued with her presence: the library where she selected a Harry Potter book and asked him to read to her (she swore his Hagrid impression was better than the films); the swimming pool where she wore a skimpy pink bikini for the sole purpose of teasing him (one he later removed with his teeth, licking her face to rid his tongue of the sharp chlorine taste); the Doctor's own bedroom where . . . well, that one went without saying.

Even on planets hundreds of years and thousands of light-years away, planets he hadn't visited in eons, she was still there – a ruby pendant glinting in the light from a shopkeeper's stall, a blonde woman ordering chips from a nearby cafe, that same woman as she writhed underneath him crying out _Doctor_ as he ran deft fingers over familiar-seeming curves and moaned _Rose_ in return (the wrong answer if her scandalized expression was anything to go by) – in everything he did.

The Queen happened quite by accident – an innocent flirtation, vastly misinterpreted. After the unnamed, chip-ordering blonde – he had scrambled out of bed too fast to learn anything about her – he had had far too few.

Women all but fell over themselves to offer him a drink, their number, the number of their hotel room. He rarely acquiesced. None of them were Rose, yet all of them were: the way one’s tongue darted out to run sensually across her lips, the way another flipped her hair – it wasn’t even blonde, it was red; it reminded him of Donna (the poor woman didn’t know what she had done wrong when he looked suddenly queasy) – the way a third clutched his arm, fingers leaving divots in the fabric of his suit.

The few he agreed to – dark-haired and blue-eyed, stick-thin and empty-headed, their only redeeming quality a promise of bliss without an accompaniment of guilt – were gone in the mornings.

And part of him, just a little part, had grown to hate her. What right did one woman have to affect his life this much? How could she make him this miserable when she had already chosen her own happily-ever-after with Mr. Right? He was tired of wanting, of needing.

It was a welcome change of pace when the Queen had fallen in love with him – deeply, desperately, unreservedly – when _she_ had needed _him_ instead. His everyday decisions – _My darling, would you like to walk with me? My love, would you like to go riding?_ – could send her to the very heights of joy or depths of sorrow. The sheer magnitude of power he held over her was dizzying, intoxicating, and he had lusted all the more for it.

Most important of all, he had forgotten Rose – as much as someone like Rose could be forgotten – had immersed himself totally and completely in the domestics of sixteenth-century royalty: walks in the garden, rides on horseback, and picnics on the hillside were what his days consisted of. Politics and war-planning were best left to lesser men, men who had not caught eye of Good Queen Bess.

Unsure exactly what he was playing at, the Doctor had grown comfortable, complacent, bored even – but it was a pleasant sort of boredom. And if sometimes he wondered what Rose would think if she could see him now, what was the harm? She was happy, wasn’t she? Didn’t he deserve to feel the same?

But he hadn’t meant to propose.

He hadn’t meant to get married.

It was critical that she understand. He hadn't meant for _any of it_ to happen.

“I’m sorry,” he moans now. “I’m so sorry.”

The Zygon invasion had been a shock to his system, restarting a brain dulled by picnics and pet names, and his spur-of-the-moment proposal had been nothing more than a spur-of-the-moment escape plan. He was ready to run.

But then had come his past and future selves and the guards, the prison cell and their clandestine escape with the help of the Good Queen. An exchange of wedding vows had been her only request and the Doctor, too caught up in saving the world to care too much, had only shrugged. Why not?

Is that why she hadn't appeared to him? It must have been. Bad Wolf may have brought Rose back to him but those reunions – returning to Satellite Five against his will, developing the Dimension Cannon and squeezing through the gap between universes – were always a choice of her own. Metacrisis or not, why would she – the woman who hadn't waited but had found her way back to him instead – return to the man who had found, and married, another woman so soon after their last separation? Never mind that he hadn't meant it to happen – it _had_ happened, he had betrayed the woman he loved.

“Rose,” he says and his voice is barely more than a whimper now. His hands shake against the overall fabric as he offers the words up to the empty room. “I'm sorry, Rose.” He turns expectantly toward the doorway, in the foolish hope that she will appear there. That these past few years were nothing more than a long and complicated dream brought on by an alien virus and they were never separated that terrible day at Canary Wharf. That he's told her what he should have told her years ago – too many times to count. Enough that it has stopped being grandly romantic and has become habit ( _I'm out to the store – I love you_ ), enough that she says _I know_ and gives him that tongue-between-her-teeth smile but always says it back because she knows he needs to hear it.

How he would love to hear it now.

Yet all he can do is whisper and whimper and moan her name, not in ecstasy but in contrition – _I'm sorry, Rassilon, I'm so sorry, Rose, I didn't mean for it to happen, never meant for it to happen. Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry, Rose._

And all he hears back is an echo.


End file.
